Stop Trying To Fix People! Why Strengths-Based Talent Management Works Better

Brice Jaggars (left) and Andy Goram (right) discuss why a strengths-based approach to work beats fixing weakness

If you're still investing countless hours and resources trying to fix your employees' weaknesses, you're not alone—but you may be significantly missing the mark.

Brice Jaggars, bestselling author of "Two Fish And The Tree," joins Andy Goram on the Sticky From The Inside podcast to challenge traditional talent management and reveal why a strengths-based approach consistently outperforms outdated practices.

The traditional method—identify gaps and then fill them—seems logical on the surface. But Brice demonstrates, through compelling stories and real-life examples, why this approach often backfires, creating frustration, disengagement, and high turnover. Instead, Brice proposes focusing exclusively on strengths and natural abilities to drive performance, engagement, and job satisfaction.

One standout example Brice shares involves a highly skilled technical employee perceived as a poor communicator. Traditional talent management would label this employee a poor performer and potentially exit them from the organisation. However, by shifting roles to leverage her investigative and analytical strengths, she transformed almost overnight into a highly valued, high-performing team member.

In this episode, Brice outlines clear strategies for organisations to follow:

• Perform comprehensive role assessments to understand precisely what strengths each role requires.

• Assess your team's strengths carefully, looking beyond traditional performance reviews to discover untapped potential.

• Create flexibility in your organisational structure that allows roles to evolve around individual strengths rather than rigidly defined competencies.

I hope this conversation challenges leaders to reconsider what it means to manage talent effectively. The implications are significant—better employee retention, increased productivity, stronger team dynamics, and ultimately, a competitive edge in today's talent-driven market.

If you're ready to rethink talent management and unlock extraordinary potential in your organisation you can listen now using the player below and start transforming your workplace from the inside out.

Full Episode Transcript

[Andy Goram] (0:10 - 3:42)

Hello and welcome to Sticky from the Inside, the employee engagement podcast that looks at how to build stickier, competition smashing, consistently successful organisations from the inside out. I'm your host Andy Goram and I'm on a mission to help more businesses turn the lights on behind the eyes of their employees, light the fires within them and create tons more success for everyone. This podcast is for all those who believe that's something worth going after and would like a little help and guidance in achieving that.

Each episode we dive into the topics that can help create what I call stickier businesses. The sort of businesses where people thrive and love to work and where more customers stay with you and recommend you to others because they love what you do and why you do it. So, if you want to take the tricky out of being sticky, listen on.

Introduction: Is Traditional Talent Management Failing?

Okay then, I want to ask you a question. Do you think that the traditional approach to talent management is working? You know, where we identify people's skill gaps and weaknesses and we work to fix them, often with some kind of personal development intervention.

Or where a business takes a standardised view of roles and expectations of that role rather than adapting them to an individual's strengths perhaps. Maybe you've experienced working in an organisation that prioritised uniformity and fitting in over uniqueness and self-expression, expecting people to fit into, I don't know, predefined boxes. And how did that go?

Or maybe you've worked somewhere that relied on rigid assessments and annual appraisals as the only tools used to evaluate employee value. I wonder whether too many of us still find ourselves stuck in roles that highlight our weaknesses instead of leveraging our strengths, creating us and the organisations we're working for a whole tonne of frustration, disengagement and teams full of people that never quite reach their full potential. But I also wonder how many of us are still unknowingly orchestrating that approach too.

What if we changed how we think about aligning talent with roles? What if we stopped trying to fix weaknesses and instead focused entirely on amplifying someone's natural strengths, for instance? What a weird idea.

But that's exactly what my guest today, Brice Jaggars, thinks we should do. And he explores that and other actions to challenge these norms in his bestselling book, Two Fish and the Tree. Brice is a renowned authority on role alignment, workplace behaviours and reimagining the so-called soft skills, which if you listen to this podcast enough, you'll know just how much soft skills is a trigger for me.

But Brice argues that when we align roles to people's inherent strengths, magic happens, engagement soars, performance improves and teams transform from regular to extraordinary. Now, with decades of hands-on experience in workforce development, Brice has pioneered strategies to unlock the unique potential in everyone. And he's going to share some of that with us today.

So, if you're ready to rethink the way you approach talent management and finally stop judging fish by their ability to climb trees, then this conversation is for you. Brice, welcome to the show, my friend.

[Brice Jaggars] (3:43 - 3:49)

Thank you, Andy. What a great intro. That's amazing.

Thanks for having me. .

[Andy Goram] (3:50 - 4:22)

Brilliant to have you here, my friend. The title of your book, Two Fish and the Tree, I love it. We had a guest on this podcast many moons ago who used a very similar analogy with fish and squirrels and nuts and trees. It was all very interesting and quite abstract at the time.

I think we're going to make a good connection to that today. But before I get all excited and start asking you lots of questions about what all this is all about, can you do me a favor, my friend? Can you just give us a better introduction to you, what you do, what you're up to right now and where your focus is?

Meet Brice Jaggars: The Man Challenging Talent Management Norms

[Brice Jaggars] (4:23 - 5:41)

Yeah. Well, as you mentioned, I've been in the IT industry for 40 plus years. Really, my journey to get to this book has been like a lot of us, is through team leadership, seeing firsthand what works and what doesn't work.

Through the years, I was extremely passionate about mentoring people. I have a chapter in my book called The Cock-eyed Optimist. I think that really sums it up in my mentoring.

I really thought I could help people change their poor soft skills, really double down on that, spent a lot of time showing them examples, having them on calls with me, situational analysis on how things were handled. It's just time and time again, those situations, those people reverted back to their poor soft skills. I started to better understand as being The Cock-eyed Optimist that you can't poor soft skills.

It's very, very hard. Really, that started the ideation of me writing this book, is to share my experience with, we need to focus on taking our talent management approach to the next level. It's time to evolve it from our traditional methods.

That's really what got me excited about the book. Brilliant.

[Andy Goram] (5:41 - 5:56)

I mean, it's already interesting. Some may even say controversial, Brice, with the amount of focus that there is in the world on trying to help people develop soft skills. You're coming from a perspective of you're barking up the wrong tree here.

Have I got that right?

[Brice Jaggars] (5:57 - 6:52)

A thousand percent. It's so interesting because I'm probably, in my book, I talk about a diet analogy for changing poor soft skills. I think that's true.

Typically, someone out to lose weight, 80% of the people will end up failing over time. Now, they're good a month, or two months, or three months, or six months, but eventually, they tend to go back to their habits. It's the same thing in poor soft skills.

I think the odds are actually less in changing poor soft skills. I wanted to give some hope. There's a neuroscience behind it as well.

It's just not conjecture. Our brains are wired to revert back once they form the bad habits. I think it's a challenge to change those habits.

We really need to focus on ways around that and put people in roles that they can be successful based on their strengths.

[Andy Goram] (6:53 - 7:43)

We'll dive into some of those things. I'm a sucker for a bit of neuroscience, Brice, so anything you can shed light on there will be amazing. I started the intro by even using the word traditional approach to talent management, which I don't know might have sounded a bit weird to some people, but I try to explain what I mean by traditional talent management.

Your perspective, as I understand it, is that that traditional approach just isn't fit for purpose anymore. I'm interested to understand where you think we need to focus on why that is, but if you were to look at trying to get rid of one of those traditional practices that we talked about or that focus around the traditional approach, what would it be? Would it be this kind of focus on soft skills?

Would it be something different?

Why Fixing Weaknesses Doesn't Work

[Brice Jaggars] (7:45 - 10:08)

Soft skills tend to get pulled in inherently. For example, when we look at performance management of resources, we tend to look at their strengths and weaknesses. When we start to look at their weaknesses, poor soft skills tend to come to the surface.

We really need to focus on, and then that leads to a plethora of compensation discussions or lack thereof, promotion opportunities, or even if they've been promoted and they're in a new role, they could be exited out of the organization. They could be deemed a poor performer. What the paradigm shift is is that's traditional management.

You look at the strengths and you look at the weaknesses, and the weaknesses play a very important role in performance management. What I'm proposing is we actually need to have a much greater emphasis on the strengths of the resource. Now, that doesn't mean that the poor soft skills aren't taken into consideration, but they're taken into consideration based on role alignment.

They might not be in the right role. In my book, I give a plethora of real examples of people who did the performance management and were managed out. Some I was able to get in front of.

Back in the day, I took over for a project manager in a very large engagement. The project manager was overseas on holidays, and they wanted me to exit the project manager based on the performance. But when I really dug in, what the project manager had was his strengths resided in managing the client.

He had poor soft skills in the detail-oriented task, but he was an exceptional client manager. So I talked to the organization. I asked them for me to keep the resource, elevate him to a client manager when he returned.

That's what I did. He completely knocked it out of the park, ended up continuing up the promotional ladder, went to become an extremely successful GM in Singapore, then came back to the US and ran one of our largest regions globally. So it was a great story that we were on the cusp of exiting this resource based on quote-unquote poor performance, but in reality wasn't aligned to the right role.

[Andy Goram] (10:09 - 10:36)

I think that's really fascinating because maybe this is why the focus on traditional talent management is slightly skewed. It's a bit role-focused in the other way and a bit weakness-focused in the other way. What we're just trying to take a tweak here is more focus on the strengths.

Actually, what does that mean for the role and the possibilities of a role and the potential of a role rather than perhaps the rigid structures we occasionally apply to roles?

[Brice Jaggars] (10:38 - 12:11)

That's exactly right. I have a chapter in my book. I don't believe in bad performers.

I believe in good people in bad roles. Let's let your HR weed out the bad performers on the vetting process and hiring or what have you, but let's focus on the good people in the wrong roles. We're so quick to jump to the fact that somebody isn't performing and look to exit.

I have another example in the book where I used the term all-star shortstop in baseball, in American baseball. He was all-world, literally the best in his space technically in the world. They asked him to take on a stretch role, which was become a general manager.

He did okay. He did well, but he didn't do as well as he did in the previous role. Instead of putting him back in his all-world role on the role alignment based on his strengths and weaknesses, they exit him out of the organization.

What did he do? He went to another organization as an all-world shortstop, and he's completely killing it. There's just lost opportunities for the company because they were so short-sighted in not appreciating the strengths.

You got to be able to support this. This leads into stretch roles. As we go and get promoted, a lot of times we're in stretch roles, and we are going to have challenges.

It's important to, as part of role alignment and setting the right expectations on the future of performance management, we need to understand those variables.

[Andy Goram] (12:12 - 12:34)

I want to make sure, and I think that story is a great example of how brilliant the title of your book is, but I want to make sure we take everybody with us. So if people aren't familiar with the metaphor of, usually it's a fish and a tree. You've got two fish in your analogy.

How about just bringing everybody up to speed with what on earth fishes and trees have got to do with this stuff?

The Fish and Tree Analogy Explained

[Brice Jaggars] (12:35 - 14:29)

Yeah, I would love to. There's a famous quote, some say Einstein. There's a little bit of debate, so I left it as just a famous quote in my book, but there's a famous quote called The Fish and the Tree.

It says, if you expect that fish to climb that tree, it will go around its whole life thinking it's useless. That's really about expectations and role alignment. What was interesting, the reason I did Two Fish and the Tree is I have a chapter in the book.

I had taken on a business role to run a P&L in a company, and I had not been on that side of the business. I used to tease my sellers, they brought me to the dark side. I worked with the sellers, and I had one seller that was just really prickly to me because he was edgy in meetings.

He never put his forecast in. It was really frustrating, and I had the epiphany, but he always made his numbers. He excelled in his numbers.

I had an epiphany one day, which really helped me. I realized that even within the same role, they're different. I have a title in my book called Car, Truck, and Van.

I realized that he was a truck. He was gruffy. If I needed to take him to another gruffy client, he'd be the one I would take.

If you go to a hardware store and you bring a truck to load up all the building supplies, you're going to be pretty happy. If you bring a car, you might be discouraged because you can't fit everything. Now, if you want to win a race, I'm not going to take the truck.

I would take the car. It's really understanding within each role the strengths of your team. From then on, that epiphany forward, I really appreciated his strengths, back to the strengths and weaknesses.

I recognized that he's just a different vehicle. That's why I did Two Fish and the Tree because even not all the fish are the same, and we need to recognize that.

[Andy Goram] (14:30 - 15:39)

I love that. That's great. I think we've got everyone on the same page now with fishes and trees.

No one is thinking we're having a weird conversation. We're up to speed. Now, listen, I do want to just come back to this soft skills thing for a bit.

I mentioned in the intro that it's a trigger for me because personally, I think soft skills are really, really important. I don't like the term soft skills because to me, it somehow seems to denigrate their importance from hard technical skills. That's my trigger.

I'm really interested in this perspective that you bring to this conversation today and in the work that you do in that actually trying to get people to change their soft skills is pretty ineffective or difficult as a thing to do. Why do you think organizations are still spending billions of people trying to teach them skills they're probably, from your perspective, never truly going to master? What's holding us back from changing the mindset on this stuff and thinking about it differently, do you think?

Why Organisations Struggle with Soft Skills

[Brice Jaggars] (15:40 - 18:01)

I think it's just the paradigm shift that's needed. We're just rooted in the traditional performance management approach. It is a controversial topic because until we can recognize that it's very difficult to change for soft skills, I think each organization has to have that light bulb moment.

Hopefully, with your podcast and my book and others, we can help change that paradigm because that's the future without a doubt. We have constraints on workforces and talent. We really need to evolve and we really haven't.

I just think they're just rooted in traditional methods around role alignment and not appreciating the soft skills. It's hard. It's a paradigm shift because we're all the cockeyed optimists.

Organizations are cockeyed optimists. They think we can spend with the right amount of talent and coaches and talent coaches and executive coaches that we can turn it around. But in reality, if we really take a look back, and I think a lot of organizations that are listening would probably start smiling and go, you know what?

I think there's something there because looking back, there's probably a plethora of examples they have firsthand where they say, you know what? Invariably, they went back to their more soft skills even though we tried to provide them. What happens is, think about it.

We exit them out of the organization. I know a lot of us see people get exited out of the organization. We in our head deem them as poor performers because they weren't good at communication or they weren't a good team lead.

They go to another organization and they completely kill it. Your mind is blown. You're like, how in the heck did they go somewhere else and be so wildly successful?

And that is because they got in the right role. They were able to get into the right role. And even as us as employees, we need to make sure we're in the right role.

And we need to evaluate our strengths and weaknesses. And when we're looking for the next role, make sure that we're setting ourselves up for success. But to answer your question, I just think it's going to take time.

It's so rooted in our performance management approach.

[Andy Goram] (18:02 - 18:34)

And that behaviour change, I mean, it is a lot of muscle memory to unpick, especially if it's different to your core. I do want to stress though, because I think some people might interpret you're saying, well, soft skills aren't important. That's not what you're saying.

My interpretation is, hey, things like listening, showing empathy, being able to have an effective confrontation, to be having a purposeful conversation. These are all important things, but trying to convince people to have those things or act differently from their, I guess their core behaviour is hard.

[Brice Jaggars] (18:36 - 19:22)

Exactly. I absolutely understand and we need soft skills in any of our roles. That's why I went above and beyond in my book to really emphasize poor soft skills.

And in my book, I mentioned you can learn new soft skills. So those are coming out of university or younger, or if you go into a stretch role, there may be a soft skill that you haven't had before. So you certainly can learn new soft skills.

And that's important is poor soft skills related to the role that you're in. So if you're a poor communicator, you're probably not going to be a good team leader, right? But that doesn't mean you're not going to be an exceptional individual contributor at an organization.

So absolutely, soft skills are extremely important to the success of our roles.

[Andy Goram] (19:22 - 19:33)

I mean, and I've given a very high level view on why I think those things are hard to change. You mentioned before about the neuroscience behind it. I mean, we're hardwired to behave in certain ways, right?

We are hardwired.

The Neuroscience of Behaviour Change

[Brice Jaggars] (19:35 - 21:19)

Exactly. And it's the neuroscience behind it, right? There's a whole chapter on our learned behaviors.

And what happens is when you go into a stress situation, you revert back. You can't unwire those traits. And it's hard.

So we just need to recognize that. And I saw it firsthand. I knew there was more to this when I started to research the topic for the book, because I just saw it firsthand.

And I saw it every time. One example I gave, and this is a really good one, was I was mentoring a gentleman who had poor communication skills. And he was up for a promo, for a very senior promo.

And I thought I could help him. He had great technical skills, amazing. And so that's why I got him up for a promo.

But he kept getting dinged on his performance around communication. So with my cockeyed optimist hat on, I started to mentor him. And I was making progress.

I was showing. His emails were great. His tone and tenor was awesome.

One day, I was on a flight to my client location. I was in the air. I land.

HR had sent out a very innocent email to all employees. And it just gaslight him. And he replied all and completely unloaded.

And six months' worth of work that I had done day and night working with him, coaching went downhill. He went in a ball of flames. I was like in slow motion.

When I was reading it, I was like, no. And, you know, he just it just something triggered him in the email that he didn't agree with. And he reverted back to, you know, his poor soft skill around communication.

[Andy Goram] (21:21 - 21:41)

I mean, listen, emotional intelligence is a gnarly old topic. And we could sit here and go, yeah, I'm pretty self-aware. I know how to manage myself.

I can manage other people. It's all good. I respond rather than react.

Those triggers come out of nowhere occasionally and they'll absolutely blitz you.

[Brice Jaggars] (21:42 - 22:04)

Well, it's like the diet, you know, analogy. Everybody can. And that's how I found him in the cockeyed optimist.

One month, two months, they were like amazing. Two months, three months, four months. But just like with the diet, I think people, you know, probably smiling, thinking the same thing because it's very synonymous to, you know, the challenges within a diet and because we're hardwired on that side as well.

Yeah.

[Andy Goram] (22:04 - 22:50)

Well, I want to have a think about the role alignment piece because I know you're really strong on that. A revolutionary in the focus, if you like, on role alignment. And you started to share some individual examples like the shortstop guy, you know, who are, you know, they're in roles, ticking along, not really making it work.

And then all of a sudden changed and they are set alight. But from an organisational perspective in the work that you have done and continue to do, have you seen it on an organisational front where they really, really started to look at role alignment and strengths alignment completely differently? And what caused them to have that shift?

[Brice Jaggars] (22:51 - 24:33)

Well, I'd like to say the organisation I'm currently in has done an amazing job, but it's been a 180 shift for them. And I think, you know, I'm pleased to say I've helped have an input on that and that appreciation because as you start talking about this and that's how I started running my teams, you lead by example, right? So, you know, I'm the head of technology for the Americas.

So I have quite a few teams under me and my team leaders. And so, you know, it all starts with you, right? Every listener on the call.

And if this is how you run your organisation, your team, you know, then the organisation starts to pick on it because of course they ask, you know, how are your teams so high performing? And you start to, you know, explain. And so I think that's really been a light shed moment for the organisation I'm currently at with role alignment, I'm really proud to say.

And it's a challenge because, you know, certainly with stretch roles, as I mentioned earlier, we really need to recognise, organisations need to recognise. But it all starts with you as a team lead. You can, the book isn't about this massive, you know, corporate, you know, 500 organisational shift.

It can all start, it can start with you. And, you know, as I speak to readers of my book, that's every one of them said the same thing, you know, I'm going to start doing this tomorrow, I'm going to do this with my teams tomorrow, because they're so they understand. And I think they've had that light bulb moment.

So it's kind of a grassroots effort, in my opinion, in an organisation, it's kind of the bottoms up in the top down. Yes, some organisations, hopefully we'll see the book and the topic and start to make a broader shift. But we can action tomorrow, each and every one of us by just applying this to our teams.

[Andy Goram] (24:34 - 24:56)

So what did you actually do then, Brice? Where did it start? I mean, is this a process of sitting down?

And I don't verbally qualitatively assessing what people do? Is it psychometrics? What sort of things are you looking at to almost rip up the rule book when it comes to I've got these roles, actually, I've got these skills in my team, how do I best deploy that?

What was the process?

Implementing a Strength-Based Role Alignment Framework

[Brice Jaggars] (24:56 - 27:37)

Yeah, the process and I have a whole role alignment framework in the book, which can help people really get started and use it as a checklist, if you will. Now, some of this gets done by default. But there's other things, I think, in the book that, you know, holistically is an end to end solution for the role alignment framework.

But first and foremost, you start with the role assessment is really to do a deep dive in every one of the roles that you have and understand, you know, the soft skills, as you mentioned, the technical skills, and then evaluate the people that are in the role, and then map that against performance. The good news is, you start with performance, I went back to the performance management tool, and I started to look at, you know, what was the feedback, and invariably, in my case, 90 plus percent of the feedback was all, you know, poor soft skills on the poor performers, technically, that technical skills, and once in a while, you'll see somebody who's maybe not as strong technically, but reality is 90 plus percent for me.

So then I started to look at the roles that they were in, and started to look at their past performance, right, because most of them got promoted. And so then you would start to see what was their previous role, and started to come up with a role strategy for these individuals to move them around, and put them in a, you know, in their next role and put them in a role that was more aligned. I saw instantly the employee engagement went up, because, you know, it's like, I have a term of golf, it sucks to suck at golf, right, and I think that's like employees, nobody enjoys getting poor performance reviews, there's no, you know, excitement, it really is a demoralizing, and it's back to the fish in the tree, you know, that fish is demoralized if you keep wanting it to climb that tree.

And I think that's important, is employee engagement went, you know, went straight up. Also, the team dynamics, the team engagement went up, because if you have four or five high performers, and you have one or two people that are not in the right role, it brings the team down, because the other team members have to A, pick up slack, or B, there's a lack of productivity around, you know, lack of communication, the poor soft skills related to those team members who aren't performing.

So that's where I started is just looking at my team, looking at their performance assessments, looking at the role assessment, really rethinking the roles, and how much of it need to be, you know, related to the soft skills and how much are technical. And then I basically, you know, created the roles, descriptions based on where I thought the role needed to be, and not just traditional, you know, role description.

[Andy Goram] (27:37 - 27:48)

And I guess you must have had a very good, clear view about where the business was going, what the department goals needed to be, things to achieve, so you could kind of marry up these things.

[Brice Jaggars] (27:49 - 28:01)

Yeah, and that's a section of my book around, you know, making sure you're aligning the role assessment with the business goals and the business objectives, right? Your role alignment, that's extremely important. So absolutely.

[Andy Goram] (28:02 - 28:15)

And what a surprise for some people listening to this, that people actually got written down job descriptions. I mean, what a novel thing to do. There are millions of people working today going, yeah, I still haven't seen a job description, still don't know what I'm supposed to be doing.

[Brice Jaggars] (28:16 - 28:43)

Well, yeah, and I would say that it is funny too, because I'd also say make sure there's quality in the job description, because a lot of times it's just carry over, somebody Googles it and puts it in. But really think about it and think about it from a soft skills perspective, to make sure that how much emphasis is needed to be put on the role. And then again, when you're matching the role strengths of somebody to that role, make sure you're looking at other roles for the person as well.

[Andy Goram] (28:43 - 29:12)

Because fit can be quite a divisive word. You know, even in the intro, we talked about, you know, conforming and what have you. But in this case, what we're really trying to do is we are trying to match up.

We're trying to sort of see where can you perform best? Where is your natural ability going to take you? What can be developed?

And we see this all the time, don't we, with people who are technically brilliant at a job, and then all of a sudden they're thrust into a management role or a leadership role, and they fall apart because they cannot manage people.

[Brice Jaggars] (29:14 - 29:58)

Well, a thousand percent. And that's so important is to understand the next role, right? A lot of times we get into the troubles on the role alignment is in the promotion situation, because, you know, we go along and we kind of map out, excuse me, our promotion path, right, in the role that we're currently in.

And it's really important for the organization and for the person to understand maybe that team lead is not the next role for you, right? Maybe there's an engineering role that's better suited for the person or an individual contributor role, like as I mentioned earlier. So I think that we need to get away from the status quo to think that the promotional path is very linear, because it may not be the best for the organization or for the person.

[Andy Goram] (29:59 - 30:21)

I'm just interested actually, listening to you speak, when you were going through this process, did you have any, we're human, we make assumptions about stuff. When you were going through this thing with your team, were there any real surprises? Did you discover some stuff that had just gone totally under the radar with your team that you perhaps weren't as aware of?

And then all of a sudden, these wonderful surprises kind of emerged?

Uncovering Hidden Talents in Your Team

[Brice Jaggars] (30:23 - 31:23)

Well, absolutely. And I have a chapter in my book on one where the person was a leader for me and was getting very challenging performance feedback, right? I was getting some escalations.

And I took a step back. I did just that. I looked at the role assessment.

I looked at her strengths and weaknesses, and I realized that she needed to be in a different role. And it's always exciting when you see it firsthand. And by doing the role assessment, I realized that she needed to be in another role, put her in the other role, and she just completely blew me away.

She was like a Ferrari in a school zone before, where she was capped on what she could really do. And when I got her in the right role, she just took off. And it's so rewarding to be part of that and to realize that you have an influence on somebody's – it changed her whole mental outlook, her professional outlook.

And it was just really great to see.

[Andy Goram] (31:24 - 31:32)

Brilliant. What was the trigger for her? What was it that was liberated in her then?

Was it this drive that you talk about, or was it just being misplaced before?

[Brice Jaggars] (31:33 - 32:15)

Well, back to the promotion path. So she was in a different role. I promoted her to a team lead as part of my journey to learning what's in my book.

Then I recognized that, wow, back to good performers in bad roles. And I had epiphanies, and she's a good contributor, and she's a good person. And I started to look at the feedback, and I said, maybe she's in the wrong role.

And I started to then do a role assessment for her and a role alignment and really recognize and speaking with her strengths. And that was something that really resonated with me is understanding that I needed to put her in a different role. And like I said, it's so rewarding.

[Andy Goram] (32:15 - 32:50)

I think the interesting thing is maybe – and maybe this comes back to the well-intended focus on personal development or programs to try and make lots of very well-rounded individuals. But by doing that, your position is we are missing some absolute gems. In fact, we're sort of – those corners, those bits we're trying to smooth off and round, those jagged edges, those super skills, that's what we need to make the most of.

We need to accentuate, need to polish those corners and edges rather than try and round them off.

[Brice Jaggars] (32:52 - 33:51)

Exactly. And you know what? The first thing to do is stop exiting, right?

Put a pause on poor performance exits, at least until you can evaluate the person, the strengths and weaknesses and role alignment and role assessments. That's the first thing to do because you're going to find the vast majority of your exits are related to poor soft skills. And there are probably other roles in your organization once you really take a step back and look at it.

And I mean, obviously, it goes without saying all of the money that gets lost with an exit and all the time that was invested, the money that was invested, the cost of doing business. And so just double-click on the role assessment and take a look back. I think you're going to find some nuggets there, much like I did.

I could have easily exited her, right? You look on paper and the feedback I had gotten. And I moved her into another role and it was just a breath of fresh air for her and for me.

[Andy Goram] (33:51 - 34:25)

She just totally excelled. But that takes a bit of courage, doesn't it? If the data is sort of saying to you, if this person can't communicate, they're rubbing people up the wrong way, they're causing problems.

It's pretty natural for most people to get into a situation of, well, they've got to go. What was it inside of you then that made you just think differently? Were you so into this process it was a natural thing for you to do?

Or did you have the kind of little paradox, wrestle with yourself about, well, should I let them go? Should I find something else? What was it inside?

[Brice Jaggars] (34:26 - 36:06)

It's a good question. I will say this. This is what I say in my book.

I'm not saying that people don't get exited out of organizations, right? And it's taking a look. You might not have the right role.

Remember, I don't believe in bad performers. I believe in good people in bad roles. Now, the company may not have the right role.

So I don't want everybody to think that you have to find, you're not going to have any exits, right? Any attrition. That's not what I'm saying.

But she's a great example. What I found in her success, I'll just double click on a little bit for the audience. She had tremendous investigative.

She had just tremendous technical industry acumen, had been in the business for a while. So I created a role as a quality assurance, right? So she would go in and do QA audits on projects and would find where the bodies were buried to help the team, right?

So then the team was like, oh my God, we need more of her because she was able to uncover. She has foresight. She's able to get at the problems before they exist and just completely took off.

And the teams were clamouring for her. They're like, we need her. When can we get her?

So that was an example of looking at her strengths and creating a role and it just completely taken off. So again, I'm not saying that everyone is, you're going to have the role for it, but just double click and spend a little time because I knew there was something there. And when I did her strengths and weaknesses, I instantly thought of a role for her.

Transformational Impact of Strength-Based Roles

[Andy Goram] (36:07 - 36:35)

I love that. I mean, your whole demeanour, no one can see this except me recording this episode, your whole demeanour when you started to explain what you unearthed in this colleague and what she wanted to do, it was huge. You could see the passion pouring out of you at that point.

And I think that's great. When you liberate that sort of stuff as a manager or as a lead, if you find some untapped stuff, particularly if someone's been struggling, that is a great feeling, right? That's a really rewarding feeling.

[Brice Jaggars] (36:35 - 37:54)

It's a great feeling. And I've been around a while and when we hang up our hats for the last day in the workplace, that's what it's all about, right? It's the impact on our people, the people's career you were able to change and accelerate.

And think of the alternative, the experience for her, she's a great example and there's many others, but if I would have exited her, her mental health would have been greatly impacted. Her family's situation would have been impacted. Her livelihood would have been impacted.

I'm sure she would have found another job, all that good stuff, but there's no fun in getting laid off, right? And having that uncertainty. And so instead, I was able to find her the right role and it completely changed, so she's wildly successful.

To this day, thanks me, every day we talk, give me way too much credit for helping her because she has to have the skills to start off with to be able to be successful, of course, but again, it's just kind of putting the right person. It's much like a coach of a team, right? And you might have five great athletes in one position, but five great athletes, but that doesn't mean all those athletes are going to be good in the positions.

Your job as a leader is to find the right player for the right position at the right time. Yeah.

[Andy Goram] (37:54 - 38:26)

And that can sound so obvious and simplistic. And yet there are a litany of people who fail in a particular role and are jettisoned from a company when they have potentially so much more to offer. But because they don't fit that role, they're lost.

And I wonder how many how many businesses have thrown away great untapped potential and skills through just a lack of breadth in understanding what's going on.

[Brice Jaggars] (38:27 - 39:20)

And the cost associated with it, you know, by having that attrition. And, you know, there's just nothing more pleasing to be able to help somebody in their career. And that's what it's all about, like I mentioned at the end of the day.

But, you know, there's thousands of organizations. And just unfortunate it's the old paradigm that's, you know, there. But I take on the mantra that if I have to exit anybody out of the organization, I have failed them.

And I think we as leaders need to have more empathy, but more accountability and change our own mindset with these exits. And I don't mean give them more training and, you know, be a cockeyed optimist on poor soft skills, because I've learned the hard way. And I think probably many in the audience have shaken their heads and they've learned the hard way as well.

But I'm talking about the role alignment, role assessments, really changing the way we think, because we owe it to our people.

[Andy Goram] (39:21 - 39:57)

Because that's to me the ultimate kind of seen, heard and valued backup, right? Because these are the three things we believe that every employee wants to get out of a job to be seen, to be heard, to know that they add value because people show that they value. This whole process we've talked about today is almost the ultimate manifestation of that, right?

If we're really seeing somebody's worth and their value and we put them in a job where they excel and they feel good about themselves, but they also benefit the colleagues around them, the customers, the whole organization, the whole ecosystem benefits right from this stuff.

[Brice Jaggars] (39:57 - 40:38)

Exactly, exactly. And, you know, as leaders, we can hit the easy button and exit out of the organization. And I think that's what we've done for so many years.

But if we can change our paradigm and get that accountability and recognize all of the wins that happen on the board when we're able to kind of put the right people in the right roles, I mean, it's extremely rewarding. At the end of the day, we all know our people are what makes our business. And we as leaders have to step up our game and get out of the traditional, you know, laziness in performance management and just, you know, get the performance readouts, exit a person out of the organization.

We need to lean in and really take our leadership to the next level.

[Andy Goram] (40:39 - 41:16)

Well, look, Brice, if someone is sitting here today listening to you talk and getting all hot and bothered and excited about wanting to change their own, I guess their own approach to talent management right now, if they wanted to step in to the business on Monday morning and challenge the entire talent management approach in that organization from that point forward, what do you think that first conversation should really look like based on all of the work you've done today?

Changing Your Organisation’s Approach to Performance Management

[Brice Jaggars] (41:18 - 41:49)

I would say it first starts with rethinking performance management, is to go in and propose, you know, changing the paradigm around performance management, which jumpstarts the conversation into role alignment. You can't have good performance management without good role alignment. And I think it's time for organizations to really put the elbow grease into, you know, the role alignment and performance management is to change the mindset and the paradigm around such.

[Andy Goram] (41:50 - 42:07)

Because we've got to get away from performance management being a negative, poor performer, get them out, underperformance type conversation, as opposed to a continuum, right? About how do we elicit the best performance and realize more potential from this individual?

[Brice Jaggars] (42:08 - 42:13)

Exactly. And our team, our teams deserve it. The individual, the teams and the organization deserves that.

[Andy Goram] (42:14 - 42:53)

I love this. Um, Brice, we have rattled through our time together already today, which is just bizarre that I'm never, well, actually I'm always surprised every blinking episode. I'm surprised at how quick the time goes, but we've come to the bit in the show that I like to call sticky notes.

So I'm going to be asking you, my friend, I'm putting on the spot a little bit to sort of summarize. If you're going to leave our listeners with three stellar takeaways about rethinking how we align talent or roles within businesses and really capitalize and really uncover and allow these strengths to blossom. What three pieces of advice would you fit on your three little sticky notes, Brice?

Brice Jaggars' Three Sticky Notes for Talent Management

[Brice Jaggars] (42:55 - 44:42)

Yeah, I think, um, you know, there's obviously some common themes. I think first and foremost on your sticky note, on your monitor, at your home office or in your office is that we, your, you and your organization need to think about role alignment. We, we need to change our paradigm around role alignment and, and it's going to take some effort, but you need to be committed to the values within the role alignment.

And then underneath that are number two, I would say focus on strengths. Now, of course that's part of role alignment, but it's so important to have as a sticky note to remind yourself each and every day, do not go to the dark side and start focusing on someone's weakness, right? When you look at their strengths, look what they bring to the table.

Think of the car, truck and van. Look at the truck. When I was able to look at, at that resource and, and, and focus on his strengths each and every day, I loved the interactions I had with them.

I was able to overcome my, my focus on the weaknesses and, and we just excelled together as a team. And then the third, and this is for all of us, be sure you are in the right role. On a sticky, on your, on your desk, put, make sure you are in the right role or you are going into the right role if you're going to be promoted, right?

Just don't go the traditional promotional path. Make sure you're going to be successful. Getting to a promotion is the easy part.

Keeping the promotion, that's where the real, the real work begins. And it's, it's important that you're honest with yourself and you're honest with your capabilities, much like we need to be honest that if we're going to be successful on a diet, if you do have poor soft skills, just please recognize those and find the roles that fit you.

[Andy Goram] (44:42 - 45:11)

Fabulous. I love that last one as well. I really, really liked that last one.

It's all very well managing everybody else and sorting everybody else, but sort your own boat out first as well. Make sure you're in the right vessel to do your best too. Brice, fabulous.

I've loved having you on. It's been great to meet you and listening to your, to your inside advice. If people would like to find out a bit more about you, the book and, and where to get it and, and all the good stuff that you're working on, where can they get hold of you?

Where can they find this stuff, Brice?

[Brice Jaggars] (45:12 - 45:49)

Yeah, I'm on, I'm on LinkedIn under Brice Jaggers, B-R-I-C-E-J-G-G-A-R-S. And then on Amazon, you can purchase my book. I'm proud to say it's the number one Amazon bestseller.

It was the number one new release. It was shocking. I started the book, my goal was to sell it to two people I didn't know.

But when, when I started talking to people as I was writing it, the number of head nods and the agreement and everybody always said, I can't wait to, to come out because I can't wait to read it. So I'm really excited. I'm proud.

And I want to thank everybody who's purchased it. I really appreciate it.

[Andy Goram] (45:50 - 46:00)

Wow. Brilliant, mate. Well, look, thank you so much for coming on.

I wish you all the very best with maybe getting to a few more people with the, with the book and yeah, it's been great listening to you today.

[Brice Jaggars] (46:00 - 46:16)

Well, listen, Andy, thank you so much. And thanks for your podcast. It's, it's really, it's, it's when we need it.

It's, it's a perfect time and I love your topics and your passion and thank you for everything you do for all of us as your listeners. Oh, bless you. Thanks a lot, Brice.

I appreciate that. You take care of my friend.

[Andy Goram] (46:17 - 46:59)

I thank you too. Cheers. Okay, everyone.

That was Brice Jaggers, the author of Two Fish and the Tree. And if you'd like to find out a little bit more about him or any of the topics we've talked about today, please check out the show notes. So that concludes today's episode.

I hope you've enjoyed it, found it interesting and heard something maybe that will help you become a stickier, more successful business from the inside going forward. If you have, please like, comment and subscribe. It really helps.

I'm Andy Goram and you've been listening to the Sticky from the Inside podcast. Until next time, thanks for listening.

Andy Goram is the owner of Bizjuicer, an employee engagement and workplace culture consultancy that's on a mission to help people have more fulfilling work lives. He's also the host of the Sticky From The Inside Podcast, which talks to experts on these topics from around the world.